3 Reasons Why Software Engineers Are Vastly Underrated

#1 The Tangible vs. the Abstract: People are biased towards valuing things that they can see and touch. They can see and naturally appreciate an office building full of people working away at their desk and can look at high-rise building, appreciate its scale and design; and end up assuming whoever is in charge of these things must be very valuable.

In contrast, they can’t see or touch the software that performs the equivalent job of 50 people or the software that was used to architect the building. Software and other abstract intellectual works tend to be systematically undervalued because they are not as visible.

#2 Lack of Measurement: In absence of good ways of measuring and valuing the true worth of things, people tend to fallback on their biases in assessing the worth of things. People tend to assume bigger team equals to more importance. For those of us who have ever worked in a “Big Corporation” this is perhaps an intuitive explanation of the way some big company executives are focused on growing their fiefdoms through amassing bigger teams. More people equals to more clout & compensation.